Best way to to tell what programs/processes I have running that might be impeding my system causing soft lag?

[Gares]

Pretty much as the title states, I just put 8 gigs of RAM in my comp and I still lose follow while my guys are flying, even in outland. I just don't get it.

My comp seems to perform better after a reboot but for some reason it looks like my followers lag for a second and then recover.

I've been boxing for 6 months now dealing with it but enough is enough. I only have this problem with Vista 64 and not on my XP system. I've done the regedit, assigned Core Affinity, set all the fps in keyclone, everything.....

Watching it now almost seems like my followers movement is jerky instead of smooth, but alot of the times it is smooth so I don't get what is going on.

[Darelik]

used to happen to me too using non-epic flying mounts. try symlinking wow.

[keyclone]

cpu? graphics card? graphics memory?

did you set the wow graphics detail to low? are shadows low?

what is the size of your wow windows? are you using maximizer? if so, for each region, what is the in-game resolution (found just below the pip area)?

[Gares]

Alright I'll try and narrow this down even further.

CPU = Quad Core Q6700
Graphics Card = ATI Radeon 4870 512MB
RAM = 8 Gigs
2X500GB SATA 7200RPM Harddrives

I use two folders for WOW one for my main and one on my other drive for the 4 slaves. I have Symlinked the Cache and Data folder from the slaves to the main folder and use no addons whatsoever.

As for my main graphic settings I have it all set to max and use a resolution of 1680X1050 on a 22' inch screen, Maximizer in keyclone is set to 1440X1050. As for my slaves they are set to the lowest graphic settings with nothing on just sound. They are split on a 17 inch monitor that the resolution is set 1280X1024 and in keyclone they are set to 640X512 split into 4 even boxes, but in the maximizer I have them set to 1440X1050.

I've done the tcpackfrequency edit, so I'm not sure what else you would need me to list.

[Darelik]

mmm internet connection?

[Gares]

Pretty much as the title states, I just put 8 gigs of RAM in my comp and I still lose follow while my guys are flying, even in outland. I just don't get it.

I see you have a Paladin.

Are you using Crusader Aura?

IF YES = TURN IT OFF.

IF NO = Not sure...

I don't usually have a problem with it, but when it gets bad I do turn it off and it still happens (not as bad).


mmm internet connection?

I am never getting DC'ed and my latency is always below 60ms on all 5 toons.

[wowphreak]

how have yeh setup yer cpu affinity?

Are yeh running anything else in the background?

What do you have maxfps maxfpsbk set at?

[Gares]

how have yeh setup yer cpu affinity?

Are yeh running anything else in the background?

What do you have maxfps maxfpsbk set at?

Yes I have my CPU affinity set. Nothing else is running in the background. I even disable my Anti-virus etc when playing. Maxfps is set to 60 on and Maxfpsbk is set to 15.

Its never the person that I am using that lags its the followers almost seem jerky.

[Gares]

I'd love to say that its keyclone or a setting that is causing the problem but I think I am having the same type of problem described in the following post:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12368277969&sid=1

My problem isn't quite the same (As I don't get the FPS drop) however I do get the stutter but its not consistent at all. Sometimes its every 15 seconds other times its not for 5 mins. This is why I lose follow way more then I ever should.

The only reason that I know its not anything related to boxing is because I get this "stutter" when soloing as well. Doesn't matter if my settings are low/high, game is windowed or maxed.

I don't see any CPU spikes and the temperatures of CPU/Graphics Card, etc are all good

[keyclone]

does it normally happen when you first walk into a new area with loads of people?

if so, it could be the system reading the data from the drives... and if you are stuttering, it may be related to the cache size on the disk
(just a stab in the dark there)

[Hachoo]

Two things. First, set maxfpsbk to 10 for everyone, then, set maxfps to 45 (this is mostly just a test).

Ok, now try again, still have issues?

If yes, when you're having issues, watch your hard drive light, is it flashing like mad or solid on?

If yes, your symlinking isn't working right (or isn't set up at all), or your hard drive can't handle the traffic.

If no, set your maxfps to 30 now, see if you still have the issue.

Are all of your clones set to the absolute lowest graphic setting? Is your main window using FSAA (anti aliasing? 2x? 4x?) Turn it off.

If none of this fixes the issue, go to each WoW window and set the graphics to the BARE minimum, ALL of them, including the main window.

If you still have the issue, I have no idea. If you don't have the issue any longer, then slowly increase settings on only your main window until you have the issue again to determine what the problem is.

Edit: Also, not sure what your CPU affinity is actually set to, but I have a dual core processor and it actually helped me to set my 4 clones to ALL be on CPU1, and leave ONLY my main on CPU0 - even though the clones stutter like hell I can fly with 5 epic flyers without losing follow ever.

[Gares]

does it normally happen when you first walk into a new area with loads of people?

if so, it could be the system reading the data from the drives... and if you are stuttering, it may be related to the cache size on the disk
(just a stab in the dark there)

It happens in combat and not when I first enter a crowded place. I know that lag, but my best guess could be reading data from the drive. As someone said I doubt that its my symlinks cause it happen when I solo (which is an entirely different WOW folder as well), so it *might* be something related to my Hard Drive. I honestly couldn't tell you if my HD light is going like mad when it happens cause its only like 1-2 seconds. (Nothing like raiding Sarth and all of sudden my spellcast stutters in the middle of a lava wave and I get hit).

I don't suppose there is anyway to test this out with my cache size etc? The only reason I ask is cause the problem is no better or worse on how many instances of WOW I have running.

I also have my effects set to 24 bit color 24 bit depth 1XMultisampling, maybe I should turn that down? But I really don't see that causing the problem.

[Ticks]

Sounds like a disk issue. When you travel into high population areas, the wow client starts to cache information about the NPCs/Players in the area and your pagefile will be very active. If you can, keep the pagefile.sys file off of the drive where your wow clients are installed. For example, I have a C: drive for the OS and an E: drive for my wow installations. These two drives are on two distinct raid 0 disks and on two different channels. A lot of the newer motherboards will have dual channel disk controllers and if you take advantage of that fact, you can divide the data flow between them and get noticeably better performance.

[Hachoo]

does it normally happen when you first walk into a new area with loads of people?

if so, it could be the system reading the data from the drives... and if you are stuttering, it may be related to the cache size on the disk
(just a stab in the dark there)

It happens in combat and not when I first enter a crowded place. I know that lag, but my best guess could be reading data from the drive. As someone said I doubt that its my symlinks cause it happen when I solo (which is an entirely different WOW folder as well), so it *might* be something related to my Hard Drive. I honestly couldn't tell you if my HD light is going like mad when it happens cause its only like 1-2 seconds. (Nothing like raiding Sarth and all of sudden my spellcast stutters in the middle of a lava wave and I get hit).

I don't suppose there is anyway to test this out with my cache size etc? The only reason I ask is cause the problem is no better or worse on how many instances of WOW I have running.

I also have my effects set to 24 bit color 24 bit depth 1XMultisampling, maybe I should turn that down? But I really don't see that causing the problem.If it only happens 1-2 seconds it might be trickier to find. What I would do is run WoW in windowed mode, open up task manager and sort processes by CPU used from highest to lowest. Now play, and when it freezes temporarily glance at the task manager window and see if anything is spiking CPU usage. If not, its most likely a disk issue.

[Gares]

I will have to try that.

EDIT: Well I am just flying around and my CPU usage seems to be at like 85% most of the time but I don't really see anything that was cause it to go up and down so much. Even sitting idle with my guys stationary not moving my CPU usage is like 80-90% the entire time and my RAM usage is at 4.59GB.

4 of my WOWS (Slaves are using around half a gig of RAM each but my main is using almost a full gig to itself. The CPU number keeps changing in my Process tab and stuff keeps moving around every second, but I don't see anything that is causing a spike (Other then that I seem to be running very high CPU usage while boxing). Its kind of dumb cause it says I am using CPU 14, 12, 10, 7 etc....WTF is with that? When I only have 4?

Edit 2: Its wierd cause now I have 4 guys near Utgarde Keep and 1 in Orgrimmar and my CPU usage is like 45% and steady. But I can't tell why its lower then before.

[wowphreak]

try setting all instances of wow to 16bit graphics?

[Hachoo]

I will have to try that.

EDIT: Well I am just flying around and my CPU usage seems to be at like 85% most of the time but I don't really see anything that was cause it to go up and down so much. Even sitting idle with my guys stationary not moving my CPU usage is like 80-90% the entire time and my RAM usage is at 4.59GB.

4 of my WOWS (Slaves are using around half a gig of RAM each but my main is using almost a full gig to itself. The CPU number keeps changing in my Process tab and stuff keeps moving around every second, but I don't see anything that is causing a spike (Other then that I seem to be running very high CPU usage while boxing). Its kind of dumb cause it says I am using CPU 14, 12, 10, 7 etc....WTF is with that? When I only have 4?

Edit 2: Its wierd cause now I have 4 guys near Utgarde Keep and 1 in Orgrimmar and my CPU usage is like 45% and steady. But I can't tell why its lower then before.Thats..weird...my WoWs use 260MB of memory each with the main window using ~600 (in dalaran, less everywhere else). I only have 3GB of memory in my system and dont have any stutter issues or performance problems at all unless I fly into Dalaran. My CPU also is usually around ~12% per WoW (x5), with it going up some in major cities or intensive areas. Not sure what is causing your system to use so much resources. When you sort by CPU usage and Memory usage, what else besides WoW shows up at the top of the list?

[Jafula]

Try updating your graphic card drivers and if you are using vista, try turning off the aero interface.

[Gares]

Try updating your graphic card drivers and if you are using vista, try turning off the aero interface.

Graphics card drivers always up to date. I have tried with Aero off it makes no difference.

[Bloodcloud]

symlinks:
How did you do the symlinking, Junctions (winbolic) or mklink ?

Did you try running Alts on a different HD ?

Just shooting into the dark as well (hoping to hit a hidden Nightelf :)

[Gares]

symlinks:
How did you do the symlinking, Junctions (winbolic) or mklink ?

Did you try running Alts on a different HD ?

Just shooting into the dark as well (hoping to hit a hidden Nightelf :)

I used Junctions, but like I said before I get this lag on single player as well that is why I know its not my symlinks.

Yes my alts run on a different drive as well.

As for my Task Manager etc here it is...

http://e.imagehost.org/0091/Manager.jpg

[Kural]

Hi Gares

I am about 90% certain that I know the reason for this problem, but you won't like the solution...

I bought 4 ATI Radeon cards (not the same model as yours) brand new 6 months ago. I had my main on my gaming laptop, which is a ROCK with Nvidia graphics card. Everything was fine for a good while, but I always used to notice these random jerks on my slave's screens. Because it was just in my peripheral, I wasn't all that bothered. They would sometimes jerk about a bit on my screen but nothing that made me crap house bricks. Anyway, I went down to London for a conference and left my Frikkin laptop there, I was so annoyed and it took some moron forever to DSL it back to me. Long story short, I was without my main's laptop for ages and I wanted to cry.

So, I did the only thing a gentleman could do, I stole my GF's PC. Now, the funny thing is that her PC is the EXACT same build as all of my slaves. It has the same ATI Radeon in it, same RAM and same processor. As soon as I finally got everything working together, the most random crap started to happen. It was a bit like this:

KEY: --- = Moving fine X = random 'skip' (not lag, more of a jerk or a skip)

------------- X ------- X-- X X------------------------------------ X -------XXXXX ---------------- X------XX ----X--- and so on.

I was losing follow every five god damn minutes and I wanted to peel off my eyebrows after half an hour of this mental jerking. It was the most noticeable when I was running back to my corpses. So, I tried everything, messed with settings, checked FPS, lowered res... even changed my keyboards and mice. Several handfuls of hair later, I turned my attention to the graphics card. I have a small workshop in my house with a number of PC parts in there. I happened to have a load of old ZOTAC Nvidia 8600 GTS's (512mb) and decided to just try my main first. Lo and behold... the jerking stopped on my main. A HA! I beat you!... or so I thought.

I figured that the ATI Radeon must just need some updated drivers, so I did so... FAIL
Maybe it's Direct X? I'll update that.............................................. .......... FAIL
Maybe it's the neighbours cat, I'll kill that.............................................. .. FAIL

After much fecking around, I just swapped all of the cards for the 8600s and the jerking stopped... completely. Gone. I couldn't believe it. I just swapped some top of the range Radeons for a load of crappy £60 cards. Winner.

So, like I said; you probably won't like the solution, which is basically to take out a card and try an Nvidia one (if you have one) even if you only have a 256mb card - try it and let me know.

[Gares]

Hi Gares

I am about 90% certain that I know the reason for this problem, but you won't like the solution...

I bought 4 ATI Radeon cards (not the same model as yours) brand new 6 months ago. I had my main on my gaming laptop, which is a ROCK with Nvidia graphics card. Everything was fine for a good while, but I always used to notice these random jerks on my slave's screens. Because it was just in my peripheral, I wasn't all that bothered. They would sometimes jerk about a bit on my screen but nothing that made me crap house bricks. Anyway, I went down to London for a conference and left my Frikkin laptop there, I was so annoyed and it took some moron forever to DSL it back to me. Long story short, I was without my main's laptop for ages and I wanted to cry.

So, I did the only thing a gentleman could do, I stole my GF's PC. Now, the funny thing is that her PC is the EXACT same build as all of my slaves. It has the same ATI Radeon in it, same RAM and same processor. As soon as I finally got everything working together, the most random crap started to happen. It was a bit like this:

KEY: --- = Moving fine X = random 'skip' (not lag, more of a jerk or a skip)

------------- X ------- X-- X X------------------------------------ X -------XXXXX ---------------- X------XX ----X--- and so on.

I was losing follow every five god damn minutes and I wanted to peel off my eyebrows after half an hour of this mental jerking. It was the most noticeable when I was running back to my corpses. So, I tried everything, messed with settings, checked FPS, lowered res... even changed my keyboards and mice. Several handfuls of hair later, I turned my attention to the graphics card. I have a small workshop in my house with a number of PC parts in there. I happened to have a load of old ZOTAC Nvidia 8600 GTS's (512mb) and decided to just try my main first. Lo and behold... the jerking stopped on my main. A HA! I beat you!... or so I thought.

I figured that the ATI Radeon must just need some updated drivers, so I did so... FAIL
Maybe it's Direct X? I'll update that.............................................. .......... FAIL
Maybe it's the neighbours cat, I'll kill that.............................................. .. FAIL

After much fecking around, I just swapped all of the cards for the 8600s and the jerking stopped... completely. Gone. I couldn't believe it. I just swapped some top of the range Radeons for a load of crappy £60 cards. Winner.

So, like I said; you probably won't like the solution, which is basically to take out a card and try an Nvidia one (if you have one) even if you only have a 256mb card - try it and let me know.

Yeah I really don't like this solution but I might see if I can find someone with an extra card and see if this MIGHT solve the problem.

The only thing is that I've heard of this problem with Nvidia cards as well.

[Yamio]

ATI has always, always, always had problems with their drivers. I bet they have the same 3 underpaid knuckle-headed dudes they originally hired in the 90's still building them. That has always been their downfall; they'll make a reasonably hotfire video card that rates and reviews really high, but it'll have horrible drivers. Even their latest/greatest drivers will be for shit.

I learned a very long time ago to steer clear of ATI. Yeah, I've had several of their cards over the years but I haven't bought one in the last 5 years.

[Gares]

Well until I can find someone with an extra card I am SOL cause I am not buying a new one anytime soon.

Other then that I really don't know what the problem would be.

[Jafula]

Motherboard BIOS update?

[Gares]

I did that as well already

[Seldum]

I have a small note... I also expirenced loss of follow all of a sudden.... my main is a druid/feral, and I picked the talent to enhance speed... so the other toons coulden't keep up... lol stupid user error!

Beside that, I have a gigabyte geforce 7950 GX2 with 1 GB ram on it, and my main rarly touch 60 fps. even in single player mode... lol. Crap card. Anyone ever thinking of buying this card, don't. Its gay.

I did a test of it in 3dmax or whatever the program is called, and the rating was like a laptop... yes, its probaly a diver issue, but having updated the driver with the newest driver from the gigabyte website, its still crap. A note - I software 5 box. My dual core uses almost 100% when im 5 boxing.

[Hachoo]

Erm... do NOT use the driver from the gigabyte website for that card. http://www.nvidia.com only. Also, turn off vertical sync if its on - I have a 9800GT and if I have Vertical Sync on in WoW I max at 60FPS because its trying to sync to my monitor refresh rate - if I turn off Vertical sync I get 100+FPS almost everywhere.

[Gares]

Anyone else got any suggestions?

I have that turned off as well already Hachoo. I played in Window mode (solo) the other day with my task manager up, and didn't see anything that popped up while I was "freezing" however I did notice my HD light was on but that was about it.

Also when I 5 box and my slaves lose /follow its usually all of them. Before I Symlinked my folders it was sometimes only 1-2 at different times. Its like with the symlink whatever the problem is occurs on all of them at the same time.

With more then a Terabyte of Space on each drive and 8 Gigs of RAM I should be doing fine, but I really am not sure if my HD is paging or not. (I don't think so because I don't lose any FPS when the problem occurs).

I was thinking maybe its my wireless connection to my router on my desktop but again my laptop is setup the same way with Windows XP with SP3 and I don't have this problem while I play on it.

Is there anyway to check to see if my HD is paging at times?

I'm thinking of trying Windows 7 and seeing if the problem exists.

I honestly don't know what else to do.

[Nitro]

Anyone else got any suggestions?

I have that turned off as well already Hachoo. I played in Window mode (solo) the other day with my task manager up, and didn't see anything that popped up while I was "freezing" however I did notice my HD light was on but that was about it.

Also when I 5 box and my slaves lose /follow its usually all of them. Before I Symlinked my folders it was sometimes only 1-2 at different times. Its like with the symlink whatever the problem is occurs on all of them at the same time.

With more then a Terabyte of Space on each drive and 8 Gigs of RAM I should be doing fine, but I really am not sure if my HD is paging or not. (I don't think so because I don't lose any FPS when the problem occurs).

I was thinking maybe its my wireless connection to my router on my desktop but again my laptop is setup the same way with Windows XP with SP3 and I don't have this problem while I play on it.

Is there anyway to check to see if my HD is paging at times?

I'm thinking of trying Windows 7 and seeing if the problem exists.

I honestly don't know what else to do.

Your gaming over wireless internet?

(I've always found gaming over wireless to produce bad results eventually)

[cairnz]

Try the following
* Add the following line in each config.wtf
set ProcessAffinityMask 15

Then in keyclone remove all CPU affinity for each client.
Let the OS decide which cpu to run things on.
By adding the line above you're telling wow to use any two cores of the four you have available.

* Don't have any speed altering stuff equipped to your main

[Gares]

Anyone else got any suggestions?

I have that turned off as well already Hachoo. I played in Window mode (solo) the other day with my task manager up, and didn't see anything that popped up while I was "freezing" however I did notice my HD light was on but that was about it.

Also when I 5 box and my slaves lose /follow its usually all of them. Before I Symlinked my folders it was sometimes only 1-2 at different times. Its like with the symlink whatever the problem is occurs on all of them at the same time.

With more then a Terabyte of Space on each drive and 8 Gigs of RAM I should be doing fine, but I really am not sure if my HD is paging or not. (I don't think so because I don't lose any FPS when the problem occurs).

I was thinking maybe its my wireless connection to my router on my desktop but again my laptop is setup the same way with Windows XP with SP3 and I don't have this problem while I play on it.

Is there anyway to check to see if my HD is paging at times?

I'm thinking of trying Windows 7 and seeing if the problem exists.

I honestly don't know what else to do.

Your gaming over wireless internet?

(I've always found gaming over wireless to produce bad results eventually)

I don't have any other problem with anything else. No packet loss or lag (other then the usual crap). Even my Laptop is wireless and I don't have these problems.


Try the following
* Add the following line in each config.wtf
set ProcessAffinityMask 15

Then in keyclone remove all CPU affinity for each client.
Let the OS decide which cpu to run things on.
By adding the line above you're telling wow to use any two cores of the four you have available.

* Don't have any speed altering stuff equipped to your main

I have this in my config.wtf files I however have not ever tried with removing the CPU affinity from Keyclone. I guess its worth a shot, but like I said when I originally posted this, I have this stutter/lag problem when I solo, so I doubt its anything related to keyclone or anything with boxing in general. Its either a setting on my ATI card/in game setting, or something with my HD seeking Data or something, but I cannot seem to pinpoint it.